This chapter has been published in the book American Revolution to 1800.
For ordering information please click here.
Of about one hundred million people in the western hemisphere
by the 15th century,
probably about ten million were spread out
north of Mexico in villages, living tribally
and close to nature,
hunting, fishing, gathering food, and farming.
Some larger communities
developed in the Ohio River valley from the
first century BC and
built mounds there about the fifth century CE.
As this culture
declined, urban centers developed
in the Mississippi River valley,
building large mounds between 800 and 1400.
Cahokia had a population
of many thousands in the region where the Missouri,
Tennessee, and Ohio rivers joined the Mississippi River.
They used flint
hoes, and the farming of corn, beans, and squash spread east and
north.
Environmental strains caused the Cahokia population
to
decrease in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
In 982 CE Erik the Red explored and named Greenland after
he
had been banished from both Norway and Iceland for manslaughter.
Four years later Erik led 25 ships, 14 of which began a colony
on Greenland.
About 1000 CE his son Leif Eriksson was the first
European to explore
the North American continent, which he called
Vinland.
Leif's brother Thorvald explored the coast for three
years (1004-07) and met natives there,
but he was killed by an
arrow in hostilities.
In trading with the natives in 1010 Thorfinn
Karlsefni refused to barter weapons,
but he exchanged red cloth
and milk for furs.
Karlsefni had three ships and 160 people and
spent three winters there,
but conflicts over the women with them
and fear of greater strife
discouraged these Vikings from returning
again.
The last trip to North America described in the sagas was
the disastrous expedition
of 1014-15 in which Erik the Red's daughter
Freydis killed her two brothers and all the other women.
Although little is known of the early history of most tribes
in North America,
the relatively small populations having much
territory probably
meant that major wars between tribes were rare.
Archaeologists have found evidence of increasing population and
environmental deterioration at the Crow Creek village
on the Missouri
River in what is now South Dakota.
About 1325 CE a majority of
the village was massacred as five hundred Arikara men,
women,
and children were killed. Yet in the plains region most conflicts
were probably minor ambushes or ritualized battles.
In the northeast by the 13th century the Five Nations that
were later named the Iroquois
by the French lived in longhouses;
their territory extended from Lake Erie
to the Hudson River and
was divided into five north-south strips.
To the west and north
were the Hurons and Algonquins,
who also had strong tribal loyalties that sometimes resulted in wars
for hunting territory, raiding
property, revenge, or personal glory.
According to the first part
of Cadwallader Colden's The History of the Five Indian Nations,
written in 1727, "The Five Nations made planting of corn
their whole business."1
Deganawidah, whose name means "the
thinker," was a Huron holy man who aimed to stop
the senseless
violence of wars and devised thirteen laws for the nations to
live in peace.
He had a vision of five nations meeting together
under the branches of a tree of great peace.
Deganawidah advised
them to put aside self interest, saying,
"Look and listen
for the welfare of the whole people, and
have always in view not
only the present, but also the coming generations."2
Deganawidah
taught three main principles.
The first is the peace within individuals
and between groups
that comes from a healthy body and a sane mind.
The second is the justice that comes from correct actions, thought,
and speech.
The third is spiritual power that comes from physical
strength and civil authority.
In the 15th or 16th century the Mohawk or Onondaga sachem
Hiawatha spread this message by traveling to the Iroquois tribes.
The Onondaga war priest Thadodaho (Atotarho) resisted efforts
to end the cycle of violence,
but Hiawatha was credited with transforming
Thadodaho from a demon into a human being
by persuading him to
champion the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy (Hodenosaunee).
Hiawatha's name means "the comber," and it was said
that he combed the evil thoughts
out of Thadodaho's mind as though
he were combing serpents out of his hair.
The great council met
at the place of the Onondaga fire keepers.
Wampum was exchanged
to certify treaties, and the Onondagas
were also the wampum keepers.
Important issues were passed first to the older brothers, the
Mohawks and Senecas,
for discussion and then to the younger brothers,
the Oneidas and Cayugas.
The consensus decision then went to the
Onondaga fire-keepers for final judgment.
The Great Law advised
them to carry out their duty with endless patience and to temper
their firmness with tenderness toward the people,
not letting
anger nor fury lodge in their minds.
Their words and actions were
to be marked by calm deliberation.
About 1450 Hiawatha received his vision from the spirit of Deganawidah
so that
blood revenge could be replaced by ritualized condolence
and a council of fifty sachems
from the five nations that met
at least once every five years.
By using consensus they resolved
conflicts between their tribes and negotiated
with their Huron
and Algonquin neighbors over hunting territories.
The Hurons were
Iroquoian but remained outside the confederacy
while the Algonquins
spoke Algonquian.
Cannibalism was abolished, although warriors
still occasionally
ate the hearts of their enemies to gain their
courage.
Blood feuds were prevented by replacing revenge with
condolence rituals and the
family of the murderer paying compensation
to the family of the victim.
Accord to legend, Hiawatha carried
his teachings to the Hurons, Eries, Neutrals,
Shawnees, Delawares,
Miamis, Sauk, and other tribes as far away as the Mississippi
River.
In the Iroquois culture land and property were shared communally,
and several families lived together in long houses.
Their chiefs
were often the poorest because they were obligated to help those
most in need.
Iroquois families were matrilineal, and women were
influential in a society that promoted
individual responsibility
rather than authority.
The women chose the male chiefs who spoke
in the councils,
listening to the advice of the women.
The chiefs
were older warriors, who had renounced the warpath for the council
fire.
While men were out hunting, women governed their communities;
they could veto a war
by not providing the necessary supplies
for the expedition.
If a male kinsman was killed in a war, a woman
could claim an enemy captive
as compensation and could torture
or kill him.
The Iroquois raised their children naturally with a long period
of breast-feeding and no pressure to learn toilet training.
The
young were allowed to explore their sexuality as a natural process.
Divorces were decided by the woman when she
put the man's belongings
outside the longhouse.
Discipline was achieved by shaming those
who acted improperly
until they learned how to change their behavior.
They discussed their dreams as ways of understanding themselves.
The Micmacs spoke an Eastern Algonquian language and lived
on the peninsula south of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.
They believed
that life is everywhere and is both visible and invisible.
They
considered their ancestors great hunters who were strong, dignified,
and healthy.
They believed they had supernatural powers that the
Europeans did not have.
They thought all people should be equal,
and, like the Greeks,
they found that moderation is better than
excess.
The shaman Membertou was the leader of the eastern Micmac
about 1600.
By the late 16th century the Iroquois were using the
power of their alliance
to subjugate other tribes and in their
struggle with the Hurons and Algonquins.
Their policy was to save
the children and youths of the people they conquered by
adopting
them into their own nation and educating them without distinction
as their own children.
In 1600 the Five Nations of the Iroquois
League had about 22,000 people
out of nearly 100,000
Iroquoians in the northeast.
In the 17th century the Iroquois
used the power of their confederation and the firearms
they got
from the English and the Dutch to dominate most of the other tribes.
Being on the eastern border of the Iroquois Confederacy,
the Mohawks
had the most contact with the Europeans.
They lost a hundred warriors
at the mouth of the Richelieu River in 1610,
and
in 1615 some Dutchmen accompanied
the Mohawks
across Mohican territory to raid the Susquehannocks.
According to tradition they made a treaty with the Dutch
and the Mohicans about 1618;
but the Mohawks attacked the Mohicans
in 1624, and the war lasted four years.
The Mohawks wanted to
have a native monopoly
on the trade with the Dutch at Fort Orange
(Albany).
The English claimed North America because of the Venetian navigator
John Cabot,
who sailed to New Foundland and Nova Scotia in 1497
on behalf of King Henry VII.
In 1576 Martin Frobisher sailed with
three ships
from England and reached Labrador and Baffin Island.
Two more expeditions in the next two years failed to find gold
nor were they able to establish a colony.
John Davis tried three
times (1585-87) to find a northwest passage.
He discovered the
strait named after him and entered Baffin Bay.
Davis also invented
a quadrant to measure the angles and altitudes of stars,
and he
discovered the Falkland Islands in 1592.
Humphrey Gilbert established a small colony in New Foundland
in 1583, but he died at sea that year.
In 1584 his half-brother
Walter Raleigh gained a patent from
Queen Elizabeth to colonize
North America.
He persuaded Richard Hakluyt to write "A Discourse
on Western Planting"
in order to urge Elizabeth to invest
in colonies.
Hakluyt argued that England could drive the Spanish
ships from the Newfoundland fisheries,
capture their treasure
from Mexico and Peru, discover a northwest passage to China,
create
a market for English industry, increase customs revenues, build
up the royal navy,
and provide opportunity for the unemployed.
Raleigh sent captains Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to explore,
and they
brought back from Roanoke (North Carolina) young Manteo,
who spoke Algonquian.
The English queen named the new colony Virginia
in her own honor
and provided the ship Tiger and £400
worth of gunpowder.
Raleigh sent out his ship Roebuck to
capture other prizes,
and he appointed Richard Grenville commander
and Ralph Lane governor.
The expedition included the scientist
Thomas Hariot and the artist John White.
In May 1585 Grenville had his men build a fort on Puerto Rico;
the Tiger captured and sold a Spanish ship to buy cattle,
horses, swine,
and plants before establishing the colony at Roanoke
that summer.
Because a silver cup was missing, Grenville foolishly
destroyed a native cornfield and burned a village.
On the way
home the Tiger captured more Spanish prizes,
netting investors
a profit of £40,000.
Hariot designed a fort and reported
that the natives considered them divine,
because they had no women
and refused the native girls.
The animals had to be fenced, or
they destroyed the natives' corn.
By Christmas time the chief
Wingina was insisting on fair trading goods
in exchange for the
food they provided the settlers.
Later in the winter of 1586 Lane
explored more than a hundred miles to the west
to the village
of Chawanoc, whose chief Menatonon helped him map the territory.
While Lane was gone, Wingina told the colonists that Lane had
died.
Wingina moved from Roanoke Island to the mainland and urged
his own tribe to
abandon the settlers at Roanoke to starvation.
Lane returned on Easter Sunday.
When Manteo warned him of enmity
and a plot,
Lane went to meet Wingina on the first of June.
His
men fired on the native leaders and beheaded Wingina.
One week
later while they were fearing a counter-attack,
Francis Drake
arrived with 23 ships after raiding Santiago
in Cuba, Santo Domingo,
Cartagena, and St. Augustine.
All 103 colonists happily boarded
Drake's ships on June 18.
Two days later the supply ship
sent by Raleigh arrived
and finding no one, returned to England.
The next month Grenville arrived;
he left fifteen men in the fort
and also went back to England.
Raleigh's next expedition was led by John White
and included
89 men, 17 women, and 11 children.
They arrived in July 1587 and
learned that the 15 men were dead.
They tried to forgive
and forget, but White's men mistakenly attacked friendly Croatoans.
Manteo was christened and made chief of the Roanoke tribe as vassal
of White.
After only a month in Virginia, the settlers persuaded
White to go back to England for more supplies.
Because of the
war with Spain in 1588 no ship returned to Roanoke until 1590;
by then none were left in the colony, though evidence indicated
some might have been assimilated into the Croatoan tribe.
Lane
was the first Englishman to smoke tobacco, and Hariot and Raleigh
made smoking a clay pipe fashionable in the English court.
Thomas
Hariot wrote A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land
of Virginia.
Between 1589 and 1600 Richard Hakluyt published
The Principall Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation
with John White's drawings
made into engravings to illustrate
what became a bestseller in
the 1590s about the reality of the new world.
Raleigh sent Samuel
Mace to look for the lost Roanoke colony again in 1602;
but after
Queen Elizabeth died the next year, Raleigh was imprisoned for
treason.
In April 1606 King James issued a charter for England's first
permanent colony.
Virginia was to be between the 34th latitude
and the 45th.
To encourage expansion, the first colony might extend
as far north as 41 degrees,
and the second could go south to the
38th parallel;
but neither was to settle closer than one hundred
miles from the other.
The King appointed a royal council in London,
and they elected the original councils
that were to govern locally,
subject to the Crown's veto.
Chief Justice John Popham and Attorney
General Edward Coke made sure
that the liberties of common law
were protected.
The London Company hired Christopher Newport, Bartholomew Gosnold,
and John Ratcliffe to captain three ships.
Helpful Instructions
about colonizing were written by Richard Hakluyt based on lessons
from his comprehensive Principal Navigations.
He warned
them how to guard against surprise attacks by Spaniards or natives,
advising them they "must have great care not to offend the
naturals."3
The ships left England on the first day of 1607;
after several stops in the West Indies
they reached Chesapeake
Bay in April and chose the site for Jamestown on May 13.
John Smith had been baptized as an infant on January 9, 1580.
At age fifteen he was bound as an apprentice; but after his parents
died,
he ran away and became a soldier, fighting the Spaniards
for three years in the Netherlands.
Traveling to eastern Hungary,
he was made a captain by Emperor Rudolph II
and claimed that he
killed three Turks in single combats.
In 1602 he was captured
and sold into slavery to a woman at Istanbul;
she sent him to
her Pasha brother, whom he killed despite the iron collar around
his neck.
Smith escaped through Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia
before traveling back to England, where he met Newport and Gosnold.
On the voyage to America the box with the names of the elected
council was kept sealed.
Smith quarreled with aristocratic Edward
Wingfield and was put in irons.
In Virginia the council elected
Wingfield president and kept Smith off the council.
He explored
the river and at Werewocomoco met
the chief Powhatan, who ruled
over 28 local tribes.
Meanwhile Jamestown was attacked by two
hundred Indians,
whom Powhatan said were his enemies; one Englishman
was killed.
After Smith demanded a trial and was acquitted by
a jury, he took his seat on the council.
Newport sailed for England
with wood and sassafras to get more food.
Jamestown had 105 persons in 1607, but that summer
about half
of them, including Gosnold, died of diseases.
In September the
council deposed Wingfield and elected Ratcliffe president.
He
hit and beat the blacksmith James Reed who struck back and was
going to be hanged
for it until he accused arrested council member
George Kendall of plotting mutiny.
Kendall confessed;
a jury convicted him, and he was shot.
In December while Smith was
exploring the Chickahominy River,
George Cassen got lost and was
killed by Indians.
Chief Opechancanough had led his people after
a defeat by the Spaniards in the southwest
on a trek and joined
the Powhatans, but at the time
the colonists believed that he
was Powhatan's younger brother.
He led two hundred warriors in
an attack that killed two Englishmen and captured Smith,
who showed
them his compass and eventually was taken to Werewocomoco.
When
Smith's head was placed on a stone to be beaten with clubs,
Powhatan's
12-year-old daughter Pocahontas begged for his life.
(Some scholars
doubt this incident because Smith did not tell about it until
many years later.)
So Powhatan asked for cannons and a millstone,
offering Smith land as his adopted son.
They escorted Smith back
to Jamestown the day Newport returned with supplies.
With 120
more people in the colony they needed more corn (maize),
and during
the winter Pocahontas brought them food.
Smith was shrewder at
trading with the Indians than the trusting Captain Newport.
In the summer of 1608 Captain John Smith explored Chesapeake
Bay and its rivers,
meeting an Iroquois tribe of Susquehannocks,
who had French hatchets.
When he returned to Jamestown in September,
Ratcliffe had been deposed.
Smith was elected president by the
council's only other member, Matthew Scrivener.
That month Newport
brought a second supply shipment with
seventy people, making a
total of two hundred.
He told them the London Company wanted them
to find gold,
a route to the South Sea, or White's lost colony.
They did follow one order of the London council in that Newport
crowned Powhatan,
but the soil that glittered turned out not to
be gold.
Before he left again, Newport sent some swords to Powhatan.
The lawyer Gabriel Archer had accused Smith of being
responsible
for those killed by Opechancanough.
So Smith sent Archer back
to England with Ratcliffe, along with a detailed map of the area
asking for carpenters, farmers, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths,
masons, and diggers.
Smith went on another expedition exploring
the Chesapeake Bay area,
and he used diplomacy to make peace among
the native tribes.
Yet he began to threaten them if they did not
provide corn.
He got permission from his council to punish an
Indian for stealing,
but they warned him that threatening the
natives was against the Instructions.
When Powhatan asked Smith why they had come, Smith lied they
had been driven there
by Spaniards; he was afraid to tell him
that they came to settle.
Smith intimidated the Nansemonds into
providing corn by burning one of their wigwams.
That winter Powhatan
asked for swords and stopped trading corn for other things.
Smith
sent some Germans to help build a house in Werewocomoco,
but Powhatan
would only trade corn for swords or guns.
Suspecting they had
come to take over his country,
Powhatan offered some grain and
then walked out.
Surrounded by warriors, Smith and his companion
drew their swords and scared them off.
They threatened the Indians
with a gun to make them load the corn.
Pocahontas warned Smith
to leave, or he would be killed.
Pistols were also used to take
corn and venison from Opechancanough.
The Germans and some malcontents
were providing the Indians with weapons,
but they escaped execution
for treason.
Smith kept a hostage in order to make an Indian return
a stolen pistol.
When the prisoner sealed his jail cell and was
asphyxiated by smoke,
Smith revived him with brandy.
After the
Indian sobered up, this "miracle" inspired the Indians
to return stolen goods.
In Jamestown everyone was supposed to work for the community,
but John Smith found that thirty or forty men were supporting
the rest.
As the only surviving member of the council, he told
them all that he would enforce discipline
and that those who did
not work, excepting those who were ill, would not be given food.
Houses were built; a well was dug; thirty acres were planted;
nets and weirs were arranged for fishing; and a new fortress was
begun.
Rats from the ships had multiplied and eaten most of the
grain.
That summer Samuel Argall arrived with news that a second
charter
had made the Company a corporation with 659 shareholders
and 56 trade guilds.
They were authorized to tax and wage war
independently of Parliament,
and the local council was replaced
by Governor Thomas West, the Baron De la Warr.
Emigration
to Virginia counted as one share,
and after seven years shareholders
were granted land.
About six hundred volunteered and sailed on
nine ships, but a hurricane sank one
and caused the Sea Venture
to be wrecked on an abandoned island.
Named for Juan Bermudez
in 1521.
Slave-hunters had removed the cannibals, leaving pigs.
Because the leaders Thomas Gates and George Somers had not agreed,
they had sailed on this ship with all the copies of the new orders;
they were stranded there for ten months before
they could build
ships and get to Jamestown in May 1610.
Bermuda was granted to
the Virginia Company in 1612 and became a successful venture.
By the end of 1614 about 600 settlers found it a healthy place,
and they got a royal charter as the Somers Islands Company in
1615.
Meanwhile Captain Smith sent John Martin and George Percy to
found
a settlement on the Nansemond River and Francis West to
settle above the falls.
Smith bought some Powhatan land there
and criticized the colonists for treating
the Indians badly; but
the settlers complained that
Smith was interfering and threatened
him with weapons.
Indians attacked the new settlement and killed
many colonists.
Smith went up there and arrested the ringleaders,
but while returning he was badly burned by gunpowder.
To get medical
treatment he departed for England in October 1609,
leaving the
unwell George Percy in command of Jamestown.
Powhatan ambushed and killed Ratcliffe and thirty men while
they were trading.
Francis West managed to obtain corn, but he
took it to England.
As food ran out, a gang stole a ship and turned
to piracy.
Others ate horses, dogs, cats, rats, leather, snakes,
and roots.
Finally some were reduced to cannibalism and dug up
bodies.
One man was caught eating his wife; Percy tortured him
until he confessed to murdering her and then executed him.
By
the time Gates and Somers arrived, only sixty people had survived
"the starving time."
They brought food but after a month
decided to abandon the colony.
Fortunately Gates prevented burning
the buildings,
because when Thomas West arrived with supplies,
they decided to stay.
He imposed discipline, but the next winter
about 150 died.
West became ill and in March 1611 returned to
England.
Thomas Dale was appointed high marshal of Virginia;
he arrived
in May 1611 and immediately enforced strict discipline.
Thomas
Gates replaced Dale later that year and governed the colony until
1614,
when Dale returned for two more years.
While in Virginia,
Dale and Gates drew up a new Company code called the
Laws Divine,
Moral and Martial that was published by council secretary
William Strachey.
This imposed capital punishment for such minor
offenses as not attending church services,
blasphemy, speaking
badly of the King or the London Company, unlicensed trading
with
Indians, and unauthorized uprooting of crops or slaughtering of
livestock.
Jeffrey Abbot led a conspiracy to overthrow Dale; but
when the plot was discovered,
Abbot and four others were tortured
to death.
Dale motivated industry and thrift by letting proprietors
cultivate three acres for their own use.
More settlers brought
Jamestown's population to eight hundred.
In 1612 King James approved
a new charter without the usual oath of allegiance,
making it
easier to get subscribers.
A lottery was approved to raise money
for the colonies.
That year Lieutenant-Governor Gates executed
several Indians
because he suspected them of spying at Jamestown.
In 1613 Captain Argall kidnapped Pocahontas and held her for
ransom to get back
several English prisoners and stolen weapons
and tools along with corn.
Powhatan sent back seven men, a few
tools, and a canoe of corn;
but the English could not believe
he did not still have the weapons, and they kept Pocahontas.
John
Rolfe was experimenting with growing tobacco.
After his wife died,
he fell in love with Pocahontas.
She was baptized Rebecca, and
they were married in April 1614.
Marshal Dale and Captain Argall
made peace with the Chickahominies,
but each bowman had to provide
two measures of corn every harvest.
Dale established an annual
rent for the farmers and tribute corn from the "barbarians,"
thus replacing the regional power of Powhatan.
Rolfe and Pocahontas
visited England in 1616,
and she met with John Smith there before
she died of illness the next year.
Smith worked for the Plymouth
Company in 1615, renaming North Virginia as New England.
In the anonymously published Counterblast to Tobacco
of 1604
King James wrote the following warning about the harmful
characteristics of smoking:
A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose,
harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs,
and in the black stinking fume thereof,
nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke
of the pit that is bottomless.4
The tobacco in Virginia was of poor quality, but in 1612 John
Rolfe had begun
experimenting with pink-blossomed tobacco from
the West Indies and Venezuela.
He began exporting tobacco in 1614,
and the cargoes shipped from
Virginia and Bermuda increased from
2,300 pounds in 1616
to 18,839 pounds in 1617 and 49,528 pounds
in 1618.
King James put a duty on tobacco to limit the imports
and advised moderation for the sake of health.
The colonists were
so eager to grow tobacco that Thomas Dale required those
planting
the weed to cultivate at least two acres of corn for oneself and
each servant.
Dale encouraged immigration by promising free rent
for the first year in a house with twelve acres.
Because cattle
ran free, the crops had to be fenced.
In 1616 Jamestown had 351
persons, 216 goats,
144 cattle, and 6 horses, plus hogs and poultry.
When Dale left Virginia in April, Captain George Yeardley became
acting governor.
In December he took a hundred men and forced
the Chickahominies to provide their tribute in corn.
In 1617 without bothering to consult or compensate the natives,
the Company offered fifty acres for each person settling in Virginia,
the land going to whomever paid for the passage.
Captain Samuel
Argall arrived as the new governor in May 1617.
He abused his
despotic power to extort gain for himself,
and he made it a capital
offense to teach an Indian how to use a gun.
The elderly chief
Powhatan died in April 1618, and he was succeeded
by his decrepit
brother Opitchapan, who was soon replaced by Opechancanough.
Thomas
West, Baron of De la Warr, died, and Delaware Bay was named after him.
Yeardley went to England and brought charges against Argall before
the Council in London.
Edwin Sandys recommended Yeardley, and
in November
the Virginia Company elected him governor for three
years.
He arrived in Jamestown in April 1619, the same month that
the Company
elected Sandys to replace the treasurer Thomas Smith.
In August a Dutch man-of-war brought twenty or so Africans
to
Jamestown and sold them to the Governor for victuals.
The Company instructed Governor Yeardley to establish the General
Assembly of Virginia
in order to prevent injustice and oppression
and to bring about prosperity and happiness.
Sandys helped draft
the reforms so that the colonists could feel like partners in
the Company.
The General Assembly was composed of the Governor,
six Councilors,
and 22 Burgesses elected by the people to represent
eleven plantations and towns.
The two houses of the legislature
also acted as a court of law
by a joint committee from the Burgesses
and the Council of State.
The Governor and the Company still maintained
their veto power,
but the Assembly claimed the exclusive right
to levy taxes.
They quickly abrogated Dale's strict punishments
and replaced them with more moderate laws.
Edwin Sandys solicited
£550 from an anonymous donor to raise Indian children
in
English houses; but Opechancanough proposed keeping the native
families together,
and they were given their own houses in English
settlements.
George Thorpe, a former member of Parliament,
suggested
that English families also live among the Indians.
Eight ships brought 1,261 settlers to Virginia in 1619, including
a hundred apprentices.
Ninety young women came to choose a husband,
who had to pay 120 pounds in tobacco for the woman's passage.
The Company elected and sent Francis Wyatt as the next governor
in 1621.
The Company lost a major source of its funding
when King James cancelled the lottery in March 1621.
George Sandys, brother
of Edwin, was elected treasurer of the Company in July.
He tried
to establish new industries to produce glass (beads), silk, iron,
hemp, and wine.
Iron ore had been found by the James River, and
a hundred skilled workers were imported;
but the furnace for the
pig iron was destroyed by Indians before it was completed.
Skilled
Italians, wanting to return to Europe, sabotaged the glass factory.
Bishops in England raised nearly £1,500 for a college to
educate Indians at Henrico,
but the project was abandoned after
the massacre of 1622.
Cultivating tobacco required ten months
labor each year,
but John Smith pointed out that a man's work
in tobacco
was worth six times as much as in grain.
In October
1621 King James required that tobacco and other commodities
must
pay duties in England before being shipped to other countries.
The Virginia and Bermuda Companies were given a monopoly on tobacco;
but the King was given one-third of the profits in addition to
the duties,
and he agreed to restrict the importing of Spanish
tobacco.
Edwin Sandys and John Ferrar were resented for being
given exorbitant salaries
as directors of the tobacco monopoly.
On March 22, 1622, which was Good Friday, the Powhatans and
other local tribes
suddenly attacked and killed 347 settlers.
Jamestown had been warned by the Indian boy Chanco, who was a
Christian servant,
but most of the towns and plantations were
taken by surprise.
During this massacre about twenty women were
taken captive,
and the Indians burned houses and destroyed crops
and cattle.
In revenge the colonists attacked villages, killed
Indians,
took their corn, and burned their homes and crops.
Even
the friendly Potomacs were suspected, and
Captain Isaac Madison
led an expedition that killed more than thirty.
A ship arriving
in December 1622 brought a plague,
and during the continuing Indian
war the colonists suffered hunger.
Governor Wyatt prohibited all
trade with the natives,
and companies of colonists destroyed their
crops so that they would leave the area.
Captain Henry Spelman had been sold to Powhatan as a youth
by John Smith;
then he lived with the Potomac chief for a year
until Argall ransomed him for copper.
In the spring of 1623 Spelman
and 26 men tried to obtain
corn from the Potomacs, but they were
all killed.
The Virginia colony was very short of food, and a
needed supply ship
while at Bermuda was burned by a fire started
by careless smokers.
Opechancanough offered peace and returned
the twenty English women held captive for a year;
but the Virginia
Council treacherously planned attacks as soon as the corn was
grown.
Captain William Tucker took poisoned wine concocted by
Dr. John Pott to a treaty meeting;
two hundred Indians died of
poisoning, and fifty others were killed by force.
The English
were disappointed that Opechancanough had not attended.
On July
23 plantation captains led men against the Indians.
George Sandys attacked the Tappahatomaks, George Yeardley the
Wyanokes,
William Powell the Chickahominies and the Appomatocks,
and John West the Tanx-Powhatans.
In the autumn Yeardley led three
hundred men
against Opechancanough and the Nansemonds.
A similar
coordinated attack occurred in July 1624. Governor Wyatt led 60
men,
and in a two-day battle they defeated the Pamunkeys.
Former Bermuda governor Nathaniel Butler, who had been as despotic
as Argall,
visited Virginia and presented to the King and Company
in April 1623
his critical report, "The Unmasked Face of
Our Colony in Virginia."
The investor Samuel Wrote studied
the records and calculated
that in the three years before
the massacre 3,000 settlers had died.
The Company published an
answer to Butler's accusations,
and King James appointed a commission
led by the judge William Jones to investigate.
The Company's records
were seized,
and the deputy treasurer Nicholas Ferrar was imprisoned.
The King proposed retaining private interests if the Company gave
him control,
but in October the Company stockholders rejected
this compromise.
In May 1624 King James persuaded the House of
Commons to dismiss
the Company's petition, and in June the Court
of the King's Bench
dissolved the Virginia Company of London.
The King appointed another commission headed by John Mandeville,
and Francis Wyatt was appointed governor in August.
The General Assembly of Virginia met in February 1624 and returned
the commissioners' paper unsigned, proclaiming their determination
to retain their liberty.
They enacted laws limiting the governor's
power to levy taxes or require public service
without the concurrence
of the Assembly and to protect burgesses
from arrest while the
Assembly was meeting.
The Assembly did not give its proceedings
to the commission
but sent them directly to the King.
When the
Council's acting secretary, Edward Sharpless,
delivered copies
to a commissioner, he was ordered to have both ears nailed to
the pillory;
but he was released with the partial loss of one
ear.
King James died suddenly on 27 March 1625 and was succeeded
by his son Charles,
who turned to Edwin Sandys for advice; but
in May the new king
confirmed his father's decision to make Virginia
a royal colony.
The 1625 census of Virginia counted 940 European
males, 269 European females,
12 African males, and 11 African
females
In May 1626 Francis Wyatt returned to England.
Yeardley
became governor again, but he died in November 1627.
Acting governor
Francis West called a General Assembly
to consider a new tobacco
contract with the King.
The colonists continued to attack the
Indians every year to take their fields,
and the population of
Virginia increased rapidly with
new immigrants, reaching three
thousand in 1628.
Francis West went to England in March 1629,
and Dr. John Pott was acting governor.
John Harvey had been commissioned
governor in March 1628,
but he did not arrive for more than two
years.
Harvey charged Dr. Pott with stealing cattle and hogs,
expelling him from the Council.
A jury of thirteen found Pott
guilty on two counts, and the Governor confiscated his estate.
Harvey released Dr. Pott on bail so that he could perform his
medical services,
and the King restored his liberty and property.
Harvey was autocratic and jealous of his privileges, denying he
needed the Council's consent.
In 1630 the price of tobacco fell to a penny a pound.
In October
the Council offered fifty acres to every person who would settle
along the York River in Chiskiack within a year and 25 acres during
the second year.
Captains John West and John Utie each received
600 acres.
In 1633 the General Assembly offered 50
acres for those settling in the Middle Plantation,
which later
became the city of Williamsburg.
Virginia was divided into eight
counties governed by commissioners
who became known as justices
of the peace.
The Governor and Council appointed the commissioners,
sheriffs, constables, clerks, and coroners.
The King ordered limits
on tobacco growing, and the Assembly codified it as a law.
Governor
Harvey ordered two acres of corn planted for every person,
and
soon Virginia was exporting corn to relieve the New England colony.
In 1635 Benjamin Symmes endowed a free school with eight cattle,
which multiplied to forty in the next fourteen years.
Immigrants
continued to die of sickness, as many as 1,800 in 1635.
Governor Harvey obeyed King Charles in supporting Maryland,
and this upset some Councilors.
They also resented Harvey's ordering
without their consent
a ship's carpenter to work for the King.
Harvey had some men arrested for plotting against him,
but at
a Council meeting in April 1635 the councilors had troops ready
and told the Governor that they were shipping him back to England.
As soon as he arrived at Plymouth, Harvey went to the mayor and
had
John Pott and Thomas Harwood arrested and the Council's papers
seized.
Although many charges were made against the arbitrary
actions of Governor Harvey,
King Charles took his side and sent
him back to govern Virginia for three more years.
Harvey had Claiborne
imprisoned and several leaders sent to England for trial
before
the Star Chamber, but he pardoned all others involved in the “mutiny.”
Numerous complaints against Harvey were sent to England, and finally
in 1639
the Privy Council replaced him with Francis Wyatt, who
was given instructions to revive
the regular meetings of the General
Assembly.
Wyatt charged Harvey and Secretary Richard Kemp with
crimes;
but Harvey went to England and managed to persuade the
King to recall Wyatt
and appoint William Berkeley, who agreed
not to
persecute Wyatt and his friends and sailed to Virginia
in 1642.
By 1638 Virginia’s tobacco exports had reached three
million pounds
and in 1640 the population of Virginia was 8,000.
George Calvert (Lord Baltimore) had subscribed to the Virginia
Company,
and he was a member of the New England Council and of
Parliament from 1609 to 1624,
becoming a principal secretary of
state in 1619.
He purchased an estate in New Foundland from William
Vaughan in 1620,
and three years later he was granted the province
of Avalon
in New Foundland as a refuge for Catholics.
Seeking
warmer weather, he and his associates went to Virginia in October
1629,
but they refused to swear to the oath recognizing the
King
of England as the supreme ecclesiastical authority.
After he died,
his son Cecil Calvert became the second Lord Baltimore and was
granted
the Maryland charter north of Virginia on 20 June 1632.
A year earlier William Claiborne had purchased Kent Island in
the upper Chesapeake Bay
from the Indians, and King Charles gave
him permission to trade furs.
By 1633 Claiborne, working for Cloberry
and Company,
was employing 22 people including one African slave.
Cecil Calvert (Baltimore) gave instructions that the colony
should not just be for Catholics but should allow religious freedom.
His brother Leonard Calvert arrived with settlers in February
1634,
but most Virginians ignored the royal instructions to help
the Catholics.
Each settler coming to Maryland received one hundred
acres of land for oneself,
one's wife, and for each male servant,
plus fifty acres
for each youth older than fifteen and for each
woman servant.
All had to pay quitrents to the Proprietor (Lord
Baltimore).
A colonist bringing five men was given a thousand
acres, a manor.
The Jesuits Andrew White and John Altham brought
28 servants and were given 6,000 acres
Leonard Calvert served
as lieutenant governor for twelve years and began
by giving axes,
hoes, knives, and cloth to the Yaocomico chiefs and elders.
The
Yaocomicos wanted the English as allies against their enemies,
the Susquehannocks,
and so they allowed them to settle there.
However, the Maryland authorities did not prevent encroachment
on their lands
by the English nor did they protect them from northern
tribes.
Governor Cecil Calvert told Claiborne that he was now his tenant,
but Claiborne took the issue to his colleagues in Virginia's Council.
Governor Harvey upheld the royal orders, but many councilors supported
Claiborne.
Leonard Calvert told the Marylanders that Claiborne
was inciting the Indians against them,
and Cecil Calvert ordered
Claiborne and his property seized.
While taking Claiborne's armed
ship in April 1635, the Marylanders killed its captain
and two
other Kent Islanders while losing one man.
Captain John West had
just been elected governor of Virginia,
and he kept Claiborne
under bond but refused to deliver him to Maryland.
Cloberry and
Company sent Captain George Evelin to replace Claiborne,
and Evelin
negotiated with Governor Calvert
who offered to pardon those
who would submit to him.
Claiborne’s brother-in-law John Butler
and Thomas Smith refused to submit.
In February 1638 Calvert led
thirty musketeers, captured the inhabitants
on Kent Island by
surprise, arrested Butler and Smith, and pardoned the others.
He let them elect representatives for the Assembly and appointed
peace officers.
The Assembly at St. Mary's passed a law attainting
Claiborne for conspiracy and murder,
confiscating all his property
and the Cloberry Company's.
Maryland executed Smith, but Calvert
won over Butler
and made him a captain in the Kent Island militia.
Claiborne petitioned the King Charles who decided that Kent Island was
part of Maryland.
In February 1638 Maryland held its first general election.
Governor Leonard Calvert recognized as laws those bills passed by the General
Assembly
that were approved by him and the Proprietor Cecil.
The Assembly also acted as a court and punished offenders.
The
Governor had jurisdiction over civil suits,
but cases involving
loss of life or limb required a jury trial.
All inhabitants had
to declare that they believed in God
and the trinity and swear
allegiance to the King.
Every tobacco grower was required to plant
two acres of corn,
and a five percent export duty was imposed
on tobacco
shipped anywhere besides England, Ireland, or Virginia.
In 1639 the Jesuits converted the chief (Tayac)
of the Piscataway
tribe and his wife and daughter.
When the Jesuits provided food
during the drought that year,
the king of the Anacostans asked
to live with them.
White prepared a grammar and dictionary in
the native language.
Cecil Calvert (Lord Baltimore) learned that
the Jesuits had purchased land from the Indians
in his territory,
and he demanded that they submit to his proprietary government.
In 1641 he issued new "Conditions of Plantation," offering
a manor of 2,000 acres
to anyone bringing twenty persons into
the colony in one year.
He asked the Congregation for the Propagation
of the Faith in Rome to send secular priests,
and he was authorized
to expel the Jesuits.
All recipients of land had to take an oath
acknowledging him as the Proprietor.
Governor Leonard Calvert
was reluctant to publish this because he feared excommunication;
but the English superior of the Jesuits, Henry More,
signed an
agreement with Baltimore accepting the new conditions.
In 1642 they decided that a bill had to receive a majority
vote
by the elected burgesses as well as those that were appointed.
Governor Calvert limited trading with the Indians to those he
issued licenses,
and he prohibited selling them arms or ammunition.
John Elkin was tried for killing the Yaocomico chief; but the
jury found him not guilty
because the victim was a pagan.
Calvert
sent the jury back to reconsider,
and they changed the verdict
to murder in self defense.
Sent back again, the Governor found
the third verdict unsatisfactory also.
A new jury decided it was
manslaughter, and Calvert was satisfied.
Thus the Governor made
some effort to restrain the settlers' violence against the natives.
The English navigator Henry Hudson searched for a northeast
passage
to Asia for the Muscovy Company in 1607.
Two years later
he sailed for the Dutch East India Company,
and looking for a
northwest passage he explored the river the English named for
him.
He returned to Dartmouth, England, where the government
ordered
him to stop exploring for other nations.
His next voyage was financed
by the British East India Company,
the Muscovy Company, and private
investors.
He and his crew went farther north and explored Hudson's
Bay,
but during the winter they quarreled over food and clothing.
In June 1611 Hudson, his son, and seven others were set adrift
in a small boat
and were never heard from again.
The leaders of
the mutiny were killed fighting Eskimos.
In 1613 fur traders in Amsterdam and Hoorn financed five ships
sent to America.
Hendrick Christiaensz of Cleves explored the
Delaware River, and Adriaen Block
went up the North (Hudson) River
and explored Long Island Sound and Cape Cod Bay.
They built Fort
Nassau on Castle Island near what is now Albany
and left Jacob
Eelkens in charge, returning to Holland
with a load of furs and
the Figurative Map.
The States General gave the United New Netherland Company
an exclusive charter in the new world on 11 October 1614.
Cornelis Hendricksen traded with the Minquas for furs, and he
ransomed
three Company
employees from the Mohawks and Mohicans
with kettles, beads, and other merchandise.
Christiaensz also
took two Indians back to Holland;
but while he was on the North
River in 1619, one of them murdered him.
Two months after their Truce with Spain ended, the Dutch chartered
the West India Company in June 1621, authorizing them to govern
and administer justice,
make alliances with natives, build forts,
and make war or peace
with the approval of the States General
at The Hague.
In 1623 they sent out the skipper Cornelis Jacobsz
Mey of Hoorn with thirty families,
who were mostly French-speaking
Walloons from southern Netherlands.
Fort Nassau was in ruins from
flooding, but they erected Fort Orange.
Some of the families went
to the South (Delaware) and Connecticut rivers,
and a few men
took possession of Manhattan island.
Willem Verhulst was sent
to lay out six farms on Manhattan,
and he replaced Mey as commissary
in the spring of 1625.
A few goats and rabbits left by Christiaensz
had multiplied.
The instructions from the West India Company advised
in Article 9 as follows:
In case there should be any Indians
living on the aforesaid island or claiming any title to it,
as also to other places that might serve our purpose,
they must not be expelled with violence or threats,
but be persuaded with kind words (to let us settle there),
or otherwise should be given something for it
to placate them or be allowed to live among us,
and a contract should be made of such an agreement
to be signed by them in their manner,
which kind of contract may be very serviceable
to the Company on other occasions.5
Kryn Frederycks designed Fort Amsterdam,
and the first stone
building constructed in 1626 was a countinghouse.
Caterina Trico
lived at Fort Orange for three years and wrote that
the Indians
were gentle when well treated, but when wronged they held a grudge.
Daniel van Krieckebeeck was in charge at Fort Orange.
He agreed
to help the Mohicans against the Mohawks,
violating his instructions
not to get involved in the quarrels between the tribes.
In the
battle the Mohawks killed him and three of his men.
Article 18
forbade sexual intercourse with the natives;
but the settlers
found that
the single natives were very friendly and willing,
while others remained chaste from fear of their husbands.
Settlers
not paying their passage were given land
but were required to
remain in the colony for six years.
The Company provided necessities,
seed, and saplings for two years
but had the first right of purchase
on all produce.
They paid workers eight stivers a day but Indians
only two stivers (four pence).
The ordinances of Holland and Zeeland
were applied in New Netherland.
Verhulst was criticized for not enforcing the ordinances
while
punishing those who personally slighted him.
So the Council elected
Peter Minuit director general.
He was instructed to gather the
colonists into Fort Amsterdam,
and his men killed a Wecquaesgeek.
In the summer of 1626 Minuit purchased the title to Manhattan
from the Canarsie tribe
with sixty guilders (£6) worth of
trinkets.
Isaac de Rasieres served as his secretary and traveled
to the New Plymouth colony
to meet with William Bradford, who
traded him wampum,
the beads and shells woven into belts that
were used as currency by the Indians.
The first ordained minister,
Jonas Michaelius, arrived at Fort Amsterdam in April 1628,
but
he found it difficult to convert the natives.
The trade, mostly
furs, increased from 45,000 guilders in 1626 to 125,000 in 1632.
They also sold timber but sawed more than they could transport.
Minuit was recalled in 1632 and sailed on the Eendracht,
which was seized by English authorities in Plymouth.
King Charles decided to release the ship without prejudicing his rights.
This
incident intimidated the Dutch West India Company from sending
ships for a while,
causing some hardship in the colony.
In the
mean time the Fort Orange commander Bastiaen Jansz Krol replaced
Minuit.
The Company offered tracts of land with sixteen miles
of coast land or eight miles
on both sides of a river to patroons
promising to send fifty settlers within four years.
However, the
Company reserved Manhattan for itself and kept a monopoly on the
fur trade.
The most successful patroon was Kiliaen van Rensselaer,
a jeweler in Amsterdam who never went to America
At Swanendael
the commissary Gillis van Hoosett had put up a
piece of tin with
the arms of the United Provinces.
When a chief took it to make
a pipe, Van Hoosett complained.
In response some Indians executed
the chief, but other Indians got revenge
by killing Van Hoosett
and the other 33 settlers and by burning the stockade.
Captain
David Pietersz de Vries arrived, talked with the Indians,
and
made a peace treaty by giving them axes, bullets, and duffel cloth.
Van Rensselaer wanted to send livestock to Fort Orange,
but Krol
refused to give permission.
In 1632 Van Rensselaer’s nephew Wouter van Twiller, who was appointed
to replace Krol, arrived in March 1633 with 140 soldiers.
He went aboard the visiting English ship William and got
drunk.
De Vries criticized him for allowing English raids.
At
Fort Orange the commissary Hans Jorissen van Houten had offended
the Indians
by castrating a sachem, who died from the operation.
Eelkens knew their language and traded with the Indians,
but Van
Houten forbade the English to come there and trade.
The natives
killed the cattle in the area and wanted revenge on Van Houten.
In 1635 George Holmes led 13 men from Virginia and took
over deserted Fort Nassau
on the Delaware River, but his servant
Thomas Hall went to New Amsterdam
and told the Dutch, who rounded
them up;
De Vries took the English back to Jamestown, except for
Hall.
Van Twiller quarreled with the schout (sheriff) Lubbertus
van Dincklage,
who was excommunicated by the minister Everardus
Bogardus.
Van Dincklage was sent back to Holland, and his complaints
about drunken brawls
and Van Twiller's appropriating land for
himself
and his associates led to the recall of Van Twiller in
1637.
The Company's Heeren 19 appointed Willem Kieft director general,
and he arrived in March 1638.
He acted autocratically by appointing
only Dr. Johannes La Montagne
to his council while giving himself
two votes.
Kieft forbade personal trading with the natives and
smuggling.
In September 1639 the States General ended the Company's
monopoly on trade
and opened up farming to everyone including
foreigners.
A Dutchman who transported five persons was called
a master.
More colonists came to get rich quick trading for furs
than by farming.
According to Isaac Jogues, the Jesuit who escaped
from Iroquois captivity,
eighteen different languages were spoken
in New Amsterdam.
Samuel Bloemaerts owned a brass factory near Stockholm
and
represented Sweden in Holland.
He chose Peter Minuit to lead a
Swedish expedition financed by himself, Minuit,
and the Swedish-Dutch
Company to trade on the Delaware.
Minuit left Holland on the last
day of 1637 and sailed for Jamestown.
Then he went to Fort Nassau,
and fifteen miles from there
his men built Fort Christina at what
is now Wilmington.
Kieft sent a threatening letter in May 1638.
Minuit took a ship for Florida, but after stopping
at St. Christopher
in the Lesser Antilles it was lost in a storm.
Also in 1638 some English from Boston started a colony in a
place
they called New Haven at the mouth of the Quinnipiac River.
De Vries visited there the next year and counted three hundred
houses.
King Charles in 1635 had granted Long Island to William
Alexander, Earl of Stirling.
The Dutch resisted the efforts of
the English to settle there,
but Lyon Gardiner established some
English settlers on Long Island in 1640.
That year George Lamberton
tried to buy land on the Delaware,
but the Indians, loyal to the
Dutch, refused to sell.
In August 1641 Lamberton and Captain Turner
founded
a Delaware Company and moved to the South River.
In May
1642 Kieft sent two ships to help Fort Nassau commissary Jan Jansen
van Ilpendam,
and with the help of the Swedes he arrested most
of the English and took Lamberton to New Amsterdam.
Lamberton
tried again the next year,
but he was arrested by the Swedish
governor John Printz.
Clashes also occurred after the English
occupied Hartford, and
Kieft ordered a boycott of English goods
coming from there and elsewhere in Connecticut.
When some English
settled in a town near New Amsterdam
called Greenwich on the mainland,
Kieft offered them freedom of religion as long as he could approve
their magistrates.
Kieft prohibited the sale of alcohol to Indians in 1641, but
this was not effective.
In 1647 the penalty was increased to a
fine of 500 guilders
for the first offense and banishment for
the second.
The Company also forbade selling arms to natives,
but traders could barter one gun for up to twenty precious furs.
The Indians also liked to trade for European cloth,
and they helped
the colonists by teaching them how to grow and cook corn (maize).
For many years the Dutch had good relations with most tribes.
In 1638 a New Amsterdam court fined a man for assaulting a native.
The minister Johannes Megapolensis traveled around Fort Orange
and studied the Mohawk language.
In 1644 he published his Short
Account of the Mohawk Indians.
They distinguished the body
from the immortal soul, and they believed
every soul had a good
spirit called Manitou watching over them.
Megapolensis complained
that many of the Dutch ran after the Indian girls.
The Indians were concerned that the roaming cattle got into
their corn.
In Rensselaerswyck guns were sold to appease the warring
Mohawks and Mohicans,
but the Haversack, Raritan, Tappan, and
Wecquaesgeek tribes resented
that they were not allowed to trade
for firearms.
In 1639 Kieft decided to tax the Indians over the
objection of David de Vries.
The next spring some Raritans attacked
a ship collecting taxes and furs,
and a few weeks later some pigs
were stolen from De Vries' plantation on Staten Island.
Although
the Company recommended ruling by love and friendship rather than
by force,
Kieft reacted by sending the secretary Cornelis van
Tienhoven
with fifty soldiers and twenty sailors.
When the Raritans
refused to pay for the attack and the swine,
he let his men kill
several wilden (savages), as the Dutch called the natives.
One Dutch sailor was killed, but Govert Loockermans
tortured the
brother of the Raritan chief in his private parts.
The following
summer the nephew of the Wecquaesgeek, who had been killed
by Minuit’s
men years before took revenge by murdering a wheelwright and plundering
his house.
Two weeks later the Raritans attacked the plantation
of De Vries,
killed four people, and burned his house and tobacco
sheds.
Kieft offered wampum rewards to other tribes for killing
Raritans,
and the Haverstraw chief Pacham was paid for bringing
in a dead hand.
Peace was made with the Raritans by the end of
1641.
In 1602 Matthew Gosnold led 32 men and named Cape Cod for its
good fishing.
Three years later George Waymouth explored the coast
from Nantucket
to the Kennebec River and brought back to England
five Abenakis to learn English.
Chief Justice John Popham and
Ferdinando Gorges
were the leaders of the Plymouth Company.
In
August 1606 they sent the Richard of Plimouth that was
captured near Puerto Rico.
The crew was imprisoned at Seville
for three months before some,
including John Stoneman who had
been with Waymouth, were able to return to England.
Popham sent
a second ship in October that sailed
directly to Maine and brought
back an encouraging report.
In May 1607 the Plymouth Company sent Popham's nephew
George
Popham and Raleigh Gilbert on the Gift of God
and the Mary
and John with 120 men and two Indian interpreters.
On an island
at the mouth of the Sagadahoc (Kennebec) River
they found the
cross that Waymouth had erected.
They settled by the river, but
the colony suffered from lack of food and internal strife.
In
October the Mary and John went back to England for supplies.
Fearing an attack from the French, the Gift of God did
not leave until December;
only 45 men remained to keep the settlement
going.
After Gilbert learned that his brother had died in England,
he and the rest abandoned the colony.
The elderly John Popham
died, and others were not interested
in investing in a venture
without profit.
Only the fishing was successful, and that was
continued in those waters.
John Smith began exploring the northern coast in 1614.
While he was away, Thomas Hunt was left in charge.
He abducted 20 Patuxets including Squanto and
seven Nauset,
selling them in the slave market at Malaga, Spain.
This caused the Nauset to hate the Europeans.
Squanto escaped
and went to England.
John Smith sailed again in 1615 for the Plymouth
Company,
but he was captured by the French and abandoned at New
Rochelle.
He made it back to England and published “A Description of New England,”
and on his map he changed the Indian name
Patuxet to Plymouth.
About 8,000, or a third of the natives
in the New England region,
died in the plague (probably smallpox)
of 1616-17.
Squanto returned to Cape Cod in 1619 and learned that
his Patuxet band had been exterminated by the epidemic.
Among the Puritans in Elizabethan England who wanted to purify
religion
from popish idolatry were separatists led by Robert Browne,
who suggested
forming their own independent congregations to avoid
the sins of the false church.
Bishop Freke imprisoned Browne in
Norwich, but England's
treasurer William Cecil (Lord Burghley)
got him released.
Browne fled to the Netherlands and avoided the
martyrdom of other prominent separatists.
William Brewster was
influenced by Brownism and formed
a group at the manor-house of
Scrooby in Nottinghamshire.
John Robinson earned a master's degree
at Cambridge in 1600 and became their pastor.
King James asserted
his authority over religion,
and in 1604 he persecuted 300
Puritan ministers.
The elder Brewster had been a diplomat in Holland,
and he led the emigration
which was delayed by a month's imprisonment
of the entire congregation in 1607.
They arrived in Amsterdam
the next year and moved on to Leyden in 1609.
That year a twelve-year Truce between the Netherlands and Spain began.
To avoid the Inquisition
the pilgrims planned to emigrate to America.
They were so poor
in Holland that even their children had to work.
They also wanted
to protect their children from temptation
and spread the gospel
in the new world.
Robinson became more tolerant and allowed members
of his congregation
to hold private communion with Anglicans.
In 1617 their deacons John Carver and Robert Cushman
consulted
with the London Company.
King James let them know that he could
not officially consent to their colony;
but if they were peaceful,
he would not disturb them.
In the fall of 1618 separatists led
by Francis Blackwell from Amsterdam sailed
to Virginia and lost
150 out of 200 passengers on the overcrowded ship.
Brewster had
set up a printing press and got into trouble for publishing Perth
Assembly
by David Calderhood because it castigated King James
for
trying to impose episcopal government on the Scots.
Copies
were packed in French wine vats and smuggled into Scotland.
A
copy was discovered in April 1619, and it was traced to William
Brewster
who hid in England until he secretly boarded the ship.
Despite assistance by Edwin Sandys, the pilgrims in Leyden
decided not to go to Virginia
because the Virginia Company was
bankrupt and could not provide them with free shipping.
The New
Netherland Company offered them free transportation
and cattle
if they would settle in New Amsterdam.
However, the London ironmonger
Thomas Weston promised them financial support,
and they formed
a joint stock company with some English merchants,
selling shares
for ten pounds and recognizing the labor of each colonist as one
share.
After seven years they were to divide the profits.
Decisions
were made by majority vote,
but important issues required the
consensus of all the stockholders.
The pilgrims chose New England
for religious freedom,
and the stockholders hoped that the fishing
would be profitable.
The stockholders and one large investor made
Cushman agree to eliminate
the exemption on the settlers' homes
and gardens in the final settlement
and on their right to work
two days a week for themselves.
The pilgrims complained that this
made them bond-slaves and would not agree;
so Weston let them
shift for themselves.
They sailed to Southampton in the Speedwell and the
Mayflower,
but the Speedwell sprang leaks and was
not seaworthy.
So on September 16, 1620 only 102 passengers sailed
with a crew of thirty on the Mayflower for New England.
Brewster led the 41 pilgrims from Leyden that included ten women
and fourteen children.
The rest were poor adventurers seeking
economic opportunity
and some children who were being deported.
Captain Miles Standish was hired as a military leader.
They saw
Cape Cod on November 19 and found shelter in the bay.
Most stayed
on board for five weeks as some explored the land.
They agreed
on the famous Mayflower compact that was signed by 41 men.
In the name of God, amen; we whose names are underwritten,
the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord King James,
by the grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland
king, defender of the faith, etc. having undertaken,
for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith
and the honor of our king and country, a voyage
to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia,
do by these presents solemnly and mutually
in the presence of God and one of another, covenant
and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic,
for our better ordering and preservation
and furtherance of the ends aforesaid;
and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame
such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts,
constitutions and offices, from time to time,
as shall be thought most meet and convenient
for the general good of the colony, unto which
we promise all due submission and obedience.6
They elected John Carver as governor for one year.
Only one
passenger and three sailors had died during the passage,
but 51
more passengers and half the sailors were weakened
by scurvy and
died of illness that first winter.
More parents died than children,
apparently because of how they shared the food.
They found some
corn (maize) the Indians had stored away
and used it as seed corn
to prevent starvation.
Samoset came to the pilgrims speaking some English and explained
that the
Patuxet tribe had lived there but was wiped out by the
plague of 1617.
Massasoit was the big chief of the Wampanoags.
The pilgrims gave Samoset food and clothes,
and the next day their
stolen tools were returned.
Samoset brought Squanto to them.
The
day after the spring equinox in 1621 the pilgrims made a treaty
of friendship
with Massasoit, who kept it until his death in 1662.
They agreed not to harm or rob each other and to punish any who
did.
Edward Winslow and Stephen Hopkins gave Massasoit a copper
chain to authorize
his representative so that Indians would not
pester the colonists for food.
They were happy to learn that the
Wampanoags would trade corn and beaver skins.
Squanto stayed with
the pilgrims, teaching them how to plant corn by using fish as
fertilizer
and how to catch herring with traps in the spring.
The investors had not supplied the pilgrims with fishing equipment.
Despite the high mortality, none of the colonists returned
on the Mayflower
when it departed on April 5 with little
cargo.
A few days later Carver died, and William Bradford was
elected governor.
In the next 35 years Bradford was elected thirty
times;
Edward Winslow was governor in 1633, 1636, and 1644,
and
Thomas Prence was governor in 1634, 1638, and 1657-73.
At first
the administration consisted of the governor and one assistant.
Bradford performed a wedding ceremony for widower Winslow and
a widow,
as the pilgrims believed weddings should be conducted
by a civil magistrate.
The Narragansetts had escaped the plague and were the most
powerful tribe in the area.
In the summer of 1621 the sachem Corbitant
plotted with them
and captured the
three interpreters Squanto,
Hobomok, and Tockamahamon, but Hobomok escaped.
Bradford sent
Miles Standish with fourteen men, and they rescued the others.
On September 13 Corbitant and eight other sachems representing
the Nemasket,
Nauset, Cummaquid, Manomet, Pamet, and the fierce
Gayhead submitted to the English.
The pilgrims celebrated their
good harvest by sharing a feast of thanksgiving
with Massasoit
and ninety Wampanoags, who brought venison.
The pilgrims celebrated
this feast annually in October.
In November the Fortune
arrived with 35 settlers
including a few more from the Leyden
congregation.
Cushman brought a letter from Weston asking them
to sign the agreement,
which they did reluctantly after Cushman
preached on the "dangers of self-love."
Unfortunately
the furs and timber worth £500 they sent back on the Fortune
were captured by a French privateer that robbed Cushman and the
other passengers.
Cushman published A Relation, or Journal,
of the Beginning and Proceedings of the
English Plantation settled
at Plymouth, in New England, which was attributed
to G. Mourt
but was probably written by Bradford and Winslow.
Cushman included
his own essay on "The Lawfulness of Plantations."
This
propaganda was designed to attract new colonists and minimized
their hardships
while emphasizing the availability of fish, fowl,
shellfish, and planting.
In April 1622 John Pierce gained a new patent for £50
and tried to take control of the Plymouth colony.
The pilgrims
complained to the Council for New England,
and their company had
to pay Pierce £500 to get their rights back.
The Narragansett
sachem Canonicus sent a bundle of arrows wrapped in a snake-skin
that Squanto explained was a challenge;
Bradford stuffed gunpowder
and shot into the snake-skin and sent it back.
After fishing captain
John Huddleston brought them stores and news of the massacre
at
Jamestown, the pilgrims began building a fort,
which they also
used as a meeting hall, courtroom, and jail.
That spring Squanto
tried to increase his own power by raising a false alarm
that
Massasoit, Corbitant, and the Narragansetts were going to destroy
the colony.
Bradford refused to accept several beaver skins from
Massasoit to hand over Squanto
for execution, sparing the life
of their interpreter who died of illness in November.
Thomas Weston sent out 70 men who started a new colony
at Wessagusset in 1622.
Some of them stole corn and abused the
Massachusetts tribe.
In the winter Bradford advised them to eat
shellfish and groundnuts as the pilgrims were doing.
In March
1623 Winslow saved Massosoit's life with timely medicines.
A few
days later Massasoit warned Hobomok that
the Massachusetts were
planning to attack Wessagusset.
This colony had tried to control
its criminals by publicly
whipping and stocking them and even
hanged one settler.
Standish took eight men and killed Chief Wituwamat
and six braves who had come to Wessagusset.
Modern historians
have questioned the justifications
made by Bradford and Winslow
for this preemptive attack.
Three of Weston's men, who had moved
out of the village, were killed three days later.
After this,
Weston's men abandoned the plantation.
In his Good News from
New England published the next year,
Winslow criticized the
colony at Wessagusset for making Christianity stink.
In 1623 hunger stimulated the Plymouth colony to abandon their
communal system
in regard to the growing of food, and the personal
motivations increased their crops.
Fishermen from Dorchester arrived,
and Roger Conant, who withdrew from Plymouth,
led them to Naumkeag,
which later became Salem.
The Council for New England sent out
Captain Robert Gorges, son of Ferdinando,
as governor along with
the Anglican minister William Morrell;
but they were ignored by
the Plymouth colony,
and Gorges took his group to the abandoned
town of Wessagusset.
Soon some went with Morrell back to England,
while others moved on to Virginia.
In the summer a drought threatened
Plymouth's crops,
but after a day of prayer, gentle rains came.
The pilgrims enjoyed a bountiful harvest in the fall of 1623.
In March 1624 Bradford asked to be relieved of his responsibility
as governor;
he was re-elected, but the number of assistants was
increased to five
and became the council with the governor having
two votes.
Pastor John Robinson believed that the merchant adventurers
did not want him transported,
and they sent Reverend John Lyford
instead.
He and the elder Brewster sat with the council; but Lyford
and John Oldham
were found
to be stirring up resentments when
Lyford's letters were discovered aboard the Charity.
Oldham
quarreled with Standish and after drawing his knife was put in
irons.
Lyford and Oldham were tried for disturbing the peace,
and the Council expelled them from Plymouth.
Oldham went to Nantasket,
but Lyford was given six months' grace.
Lyford's wife accused
him of wronging her and meddling with their maids.
Oldham came
back and was forcibly ejected through a gauntlet.
Bradford claimed
that the fairness of the trial persuaded many settlers to join
their church.
Lyford became the preacher at Naumkeag until 1628,
and Oldham prospered there as a trader.
In December 1624 some of the London merchants wrote to Bradford
that they wanted to abandon the venture.
The pilgrims were saddened
when they learned that John Robinson died in 1625.
Standish went
to London but could not borrow money for less than 50%
interest.
A shipment of beaver skins and cod worth £277
on the Little James
was also stolen by pirates and taken
to Morocco.
De Rasieres from New Netherland traded wampum to the
pilgrims
that they used for trading with the Indians.
In November
1626 Isaac Allerton signed an agreement for the pilgrims to buy
the stock
by paying £200 annually for nine years, and they
also took on the debt of £600.
Each share was worth twenty
acres and a portion of the livestock.
Until the debt was paid,
Governor Bradford formed a partnership with
Standish, Allerton,
Winslow, Brewster, Howland, Alden, and Prence.
Bringing over a
hundred more saints, as they called the members of their church,
increased Plymouth's debt by £550.
In 1625 Captain Wallaston brought indentured servants,
but
they soon moved to Virginia, where he sold them.
The lawyer Thomas
Morton became the leader of those remaining at Wallaston's colony
and freed the indentured servants, making them equal partners.
He called the colony Mare Mount, meaning mountain by the sea,
but the pilgrims referred to it as Merrymount.
His men perturbed
the pilgrims by frolicking with natives around a Maypole,
and
the Plymouth settlers resented their selling firearms
and rum
to the Indians for beaver pelts and corn.
Morton taught the Indians
how to shoot and hired them to hunt.
In the fall of 1628 the outlying
settlements urged
Governor Bradford to control Morton's men.
Letters
were sent, and Plymouth authorities warned them they would not
tolerate
their violating the royal proclamation of 1622 against
selling weapons to Indians.
Miles Standish with nine men dispersed
the Merrymount settlers.
Morton was isolated on an island without
winter clothes or a gun or a knife
and then was sent back to England
with Oldham.
Morton in New English Canaan satirized the
Puritans' ways
and called the short Standish "Captain Shrimp."
He described the Indians as just, honest, generous, and wise,
and the English as the opposite.
What bothered the English was
their openness to sexual love and pagan celebrations.
Thus Morton's
activities around the maypole
were perceived as a threat to the
Puritan way of life.
In 1629 Isaac Allerton arrived with Morton as his secretary,
and
Plymouth expelled Morton to Massachusetts.
After he used a gun
to intimidate some Indians to give him a canoe,
Morton was fettered
and shipped back to England.
In 1630 the Plymouth Company was
granted a new patent in the name of Bradford
and his associates;
but they did not get a charter because Allerton and the treasurer
James Sherley insisted on exemption from customs duties for a
few years.
Sherley hired Edward Ashley to trade for furs on the
Penobscot River in Maine,
but he traded firearms and committed
"uncleanness" with Indian women.
So the pilgrims sent
Ashley back to England as a prisoner.
Allerton borrowed money
at such high interest that
the debt had ballooned from £400
to £4,770 in four years.
They also had the £1,000
mortgage.
Yet Allerton had made £400 profit and claimed
they owed him £300 more
They dismissed Allerton in 1631,
and two years later he was the richest man in Plymouth.
The debt
was not paid off until 1648, when Winslow, Prence, Alden, Standish,
and Bradford sold their property to do so.
In 1630 John Billington shot to death John Newcomen in a quarrel.
A jury convicted him, and after consulting with Governor John
Winthrop
who advised the death penalty, they hanged him.
In 1632
a French ship from Canada robbed the Penobscot post of goods worth
£500.
The Plymouth settlers came into conflict on the Connecticut
River with the
Dutch trading post, House of Hope, which had been
purchased from the Pequots in 1633.
So the Plymouth traders bought
the same land from a native
who had been driven out by the Pequots.
In 1634 the assistant governors John Howland and John Alden got
involved
in a skirmish on the Kennebec that resulted in two deaths,
causing Governor Winthrop
to complain that they were killing each
other over beaver.
Invited by a tribe that had been removed by
the Pequots, in October 1634
William Holmes led some men from
Plymouth up the Connecticut River past the
Dutch settlement at
Hartford to establish a trading post at Matianuck (Windsor).
In
England the attorney Morton accused the layman Winslow of teaching
in church publicly and desecrating the sacraments by marrying
people,
causing Archbishop William Laud to put Winslow in prison
for months.
In 1635 the Plymouth colony lost their trading post
in Maine to the French.
In 1636 the Plymouth partners calculated that in the past five
years
they had sent Sherley 12,530 pounds of beaver, plus thousands
of
otter, fox, mink, and other skins worth at least £10,000.
Because the goods they received were worth less than £2,000
pounds,
they believed their debt of £5,770 was paid.
Until
1636 the Plymouth colony had only forty statutes,
but then a committee
of eight revised and extended them.
The death penalty was limited
to treason, murder, witchcraft, adultery, rape, sodomy,
and arson,
but only two people had been executed.
Sentences were less for
those in higher stations.
One had to have the consent of the parents
to apply for marriage.
Idlers could be forced to work by the government,
and the governor
or two of his assistants could order a stranger
to leave the colony.
One could be fined for smoking tobacco in
public.
In 1639 every householder was required to plant a rod
of hemp or flax,
and idleness was banned.
That year the freemen
elected their first representatives.
Plymouth had four representatives,
and the towns of Duxbury and Scituate each had two;
they met with
the governor and his seven assistants.
They also elected a treasurer
and a secretary and
had a coroner, constables, and other officers.
Only freemen with an estate of £20 could vote, and in 1643
the colony had 3,000 people in ten towns but only 232 freemen.
That year they sent delegates to Boston, and in September
they
signed the Articles of Confederation for the United Colonies of
New England.
In 1623 the Dorchester Company sent out fishermen and planters
on the Friendship,
and they arrived at Cape Ann and established
a fishing stage.
Fourteen men stayed there during the winter,
and the Friendship
brought more men in the next two years.
In 1625 the Company invited Roger Conant to be manager, John Lyford
to be minister,
and John Oldham to conduct trade with the Indians.
Conant persuaded Plymouth captain Standish to move their fishing
stage
from Cape Ann to Kennebec; but Lyford left for Virginia,
and by 1626 the Dorchester Company was in financial difficulty.
On March 19, 1628 the Council for New England gave a patent to
the
New England Company for the portion of New England from three
miles north
of the Merrimac River to three miles south of the
Charles River.
They had a fund of £2,915 with about ninety
members including
several prominent men and six from the Dorchester
group.
The next day the Dorchester Company managed
to send two
ships with supplies to Naumkeag.
In June 1628 Captain John Endecott led about fifty colonists,
who were
mostly
hired servants, and they settled at Naumkeag,
which was renamed Salem the next year.
Endecott claimed that the
New England Company had acquired the rights of the
Dorchester
Company, but some denied this and resented his leadership.
He
ruled autocratically until he was elected on 30 April 1629.
When 200 settlers arrived in June, Endecott quickly sent a
hundred to occupy
Charlestown because of a previous grant given
to the New England Company
that its president Ferdinando Gorges
handed to his son Robert and the pesky Oldham,
who had refused
to give up his right to manage the fur trade.
By written ballots
they elected the nonconformist ministers
Samuel Skelton and Francis
Higginson to be minister and teacher.
Samuel Fuller came from
Plymouth and persuaded them
to establish an independent Church
of Christ in Salem.
John and Samuel Browne wanted to keep to the
Church of England,
but Endecott sent them back to England.
John Winthrop was born in Suffolk on 12 January 1588
and was
brought up to manage Groton Manor.
He attended Trinity College
at Cambridge, married at age 17,
and the next year became a justice
of the peace.
Puritans believed strongly in the Bible,
and those
who urged others to do so were called precisians.
At
first Puritans supported the Anglican church, but by 1630 separatists,
such as the pilgrims at Plymouth, were also considered Puritans.
King Charles came into conflict with Puritans resisting his policies,
and on 2 March 1629 he blocked Parliament from adjourning.
The
royal guard took Puritan leaders to the Tower,
and Winthrop lost
his position at court as an attorney.
For the next eleven years Charles tried to govern without Parliament.
The pilgrims had remained
loyal to King James while rejecting the Anglican church.
Most
of the Puritans wanted to get away from King Charles
but adhered
to the Church of England.
Though many Puritans rejected the Book
of Common Prayer and the sacraments,
they wanted to reform
the Church.
On March 4 Charles granted the Massachusetts Bay Company
a charter,
and they selected Matthew Craddock as governor.
After
much discussion, on August 26 twelve leaders that included Richard
Saltonstall,
Thomas Dudley, Isaac Johnson, and John Winthrop signed
an agreement at Cambridge
to embark for the plantation the following
March provided that the government
and the patent were transferred
by a legal court order to their Massachusetts Bay Company.
They
did not want to be governed from England.
Craddock retired in
October, and Winthrop was chosen as governor.
On 29 March 1630 the Arbella and three other ships
carried 400 colonists,
and 600 more followed
a month later.
Reverend John White of Dorchester, who had helped
inspire the early ventures and
in 1630 wrote “The Planters Plea” suggesting that emigration to New England was
the
best remedy for the economic difficulties of many, urged the Puritans
on the Arbella
to avoid separatism and sign his tract on
loyalty to England and its Church.
On the Arbella Winthrop
gave his famous sermon on “A Model of Christian Charity.”
He suggested that the two rules for living are justice and mercy
as taught in the Bible.
He concluded that love is real,
necessary, free, and courageous.
They are a company knit together
in the love of Christ.
Care of the public must overcome private
considerations so that
their posterity may be preserved from the
corruption of the world.
With brotherly love for one another with
pure hearts they must bear each other's burdens
because they have
entered a covenant with God for this work.
They will keep the
unity in peace. He said,
For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.
The eyes of all people are upon us,
so that if we shall deal falsely with our God
in this work we have undertaken,
and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us,
we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.7
Winthrop urged them to choose life and good by obeying the voice of God.
Yet Governor Winthrop believed that the natives had only a natural right
to the land
because they had neither settled habitations nor tame
cattle to improve the land.
He wrote that as long as they left
the Indians enough land for their use,
they could "lawfully
take the rest."
Letting their livestock graze on the cultivated
land of the Indians often caused natives
to abandon their land,
or alcohol was used to persuade them to sell it cheap.
When a
dispute over ownership was decided in an English court, the Indian
rarely won.
Indians could be convicted for violating English laws
such as working on a Sabbath
or being in a town, and they often
paid their fines with land.
During the “great migration” between 1630 and 1643
a reported 198 ships
carried 16,000 people and supplies at a cost
of £192,000 from England to Massachusetts.
Winthrop chose
the Charlestown area,
but they soon moved to find better water
and founded Boston.
In the first official meeting on August 23
Winthrop and his eight assistants
set maximum wages at two shillings
a day.
Later when English goods arrived, they limited prices to
no more than
four pence per shilling above the cost in England.
In September they put Thomas Morton in the stocks for trading
illegally
with the natives and then sent him back to England.
They prohibited selling guns to the Indians and chose constables
for the towns.
In October the stockholders opened their membership
to freemen,
who were to elect the assistants, but they also gave
the magistrates
the power to make the laws instead of the members.
In November they set the price for beer and the ferry,
and they
provided a bounty for killing wolves.
Saltonstall had two persons
whipped without the concurrence
of a second magistrate and was
fined for the infraction.
Endecott was convicted of battery and
was also fined.
During the first year about two hundred people died from scurvy
and fever,
and about the same number returned to England in the
spring of 1631.
Only ninety settlers arrived that year.
In May
the General Court allowed 116 freemen to vote for the assistants,
who then re-elected Winthrop as governor and Thomas Dudley as
his deputy.
The stricter Dudley often criticized Winthrop for
being too lenient.
Six of the nine assistants were appointed magistrates.
Only freemen who were members of a Congregationalist church were
allowed to vote.
Planting was successful, and they suffered no
more starvation.
Shipwrights led by William Stephens began building
ships.
Winthrop's third wife Margaret and their family arrived
in the fall of 1631.
Early in 1632 the people of Watertown refused
to pay a tax, and in May
the freemen were allowed to elect the
governor and his deputy as well as the assistants.
Richard Hopkins
was flogged and branded on the cheek
for selling guns and ammunition
to the Indian John Sagamore.
In June they passed a law that each
town must have a trading post for Indians
so that they would not
come to the houses.
In 1633 the General Court outlawed idleness
in order to punish
“common coasters, unprofitable fowlers, and tobacco takers.”
Between autumn 1633 and the summer of
1634 a smallpox epidemic
wiped out thousands of Indians in the
region.
William Pynchon was one of the merchants who obtained
the original charter,
and in 1632 he was given a monopoly on fur
trading.
In 1635 he founded the town of Agawam, where the Westfield
and Connecticut rivers joined.
English immigrants bought Musketaquid
from the Indians and named it Concord.
John Mason was given a
royal charter for New Hampshire in 1635,
and four years later
Ferdinando Gorges got a charter for Maine.
Unmarried men and women were required to live with some family,
and parents were expected to teach their children and apprentices
to read.
A 1635 law fined those who did not attend church services,
and after 1638 taxes were used to help support the ministers.
Church members by consensus carefully selected new members based
on their morals.
The Presbyterians were more tolerant than the
Congregationalists in accepting members.
The Puritans’ ordinances
banned sin but tried to stop short of prohibiting temptation.
For example, Cambridge minister Thomas Shepard complained that
to forbid drinking toasts would provoke God by making more sins
than God had.
Robert Coles was fined £10 and had to stand
with a “drunkard” sign on his back.
When he was found
drunk again six months later, he was disenfranchised
and had to
wear a red “D” on white clothing for a year.
Indentured
servants were not permitted to marry until they had served their
time,
thus increasing sexual temptations among that class.
Edward Winslow of Plymouth was also the agent for Massachusetts
in the patent
controversy over the 1632 petition by Ferdinando
Gorges and John Mason.
The issue was turned over to the Commission
for Plantations in General,
but they could not get the Massachusetts
charter.
Gorges criticized the Puritans, and the Commission's
new head,
Archbishop William Laud, put Winslow in prison.
Questions
were raised as to why the Governor and magistrates
had taken over
the legislative power of the General Court.
No one could settle
in Massachusetts without the permission
of Winthrop, Dudley, Endecott,
or two of their assistants.
Anyone “defaming” the court
or a magistrate could be
fined, imprisoned, disenfranchised, or
banished.
After petitioning, in May 1634 Winthrop and his assistants
agreed to let the General Court
with the freeman have the exclusive
power to make laws, raise funds by taxing,
dispose of land, elect
and appoint officers, and set their duties.
In November the General
Court learned that Roger Williams was teaching that
the royal
patent was invalid before God and that it did not give them legal
title to the land.
They summoned him then and again the following
April because of his objection to the oath,
and they questioned
him a third time in July.
When King Charles gave Ferdinando Gorges
and Mason a commission
to govern New England, Winthrop prepared
the fortifications and militia.
The King and deputies were still
asking Governor Winthrop to show them the charter.
That year they
elected Dudley governor, and in 1635 John Haynes was chosen governor.
John Cotton arrived in 1633, began preaching, and was quickly
elected a teacher.
He believed that the magistrates, the ministers,
and the people should concur.
Thomas Hooker preached at New Town,
advocating
“in matters which concern the common good a general council,
chosen by all,” as what is “most safe for the relief of the whole.”8
Watertown and Dorchester organized
town governments.
By 1635 Massachusetts Bay had a dozen churches.
Influenced by Roger Williams, Endecott cut out the royal cross
from the
Salem Company flag,
and the Boston General Court banned
him from holding office for a year.
Winthrop suggested that he
should have brought the issue to the magistrates,
and in December
1636 the military commissioners decided to leave the cross off
all the flags.
Salem elected Williams as their teacher,
and Boston
punished them by withholding a tract of land.
In January 1636
they ordered Williams to sail for England,
but he escaped into
the forest instead.
By 1636 Anne Hutchinson had fourteen children,
and she was
helpful as an advisor on pre-natal and post-natal care.
She also
gave religious lectures in her home that grew from half a dozen
people
to fifty or more twice a week; one was for women only,
but men attended the other.
Anne was supported by the preacher
John Wheelwright, the minister Cotton,
Captain Underhill, and
even Governor Henry Vane who had been elected at the age of 23.
She rejected what she called the “covenant of works” because she believed that
one is saved by the grace of God and
not by good works alone.
She and Wheelwright called those who
believed that good works
bring redemption “legalists,” and he warned that those in the covenant
of works may not know
the work of grace and the ways of God.
In January 1637 Wheelwright
said that they were not libertines nor antinomians,
but this latter
term came to be used to describe this movement.
In March 1637
Stephen Greensmith was fined £40 for saying that he thought
all the ministers except Cotton, Wheelwright, and Hooker taught
a covenant of works.
Wheelwright was convicted of sedition and
contempt, but his sentencing was postponed.
After Winthrop was elected governor again in the spring of
1637,
Anne Hutchinson was questioned by the General Court.
She
maintained her conscientious viewpoint and cited Titus
2:3-4 that the elder women
should instruct the younger; but Governor
Winthrop reminded her that they were to
train them to love their
husbands and be submissive to them.
She was convicted of violating
the fifth commandment,
because they believed that magistrates
should be honored as parents.
Finally she warned them that God
would ruin them, their posterity,
and the state because of what
they were doing to her.
When asked how she knew this, she replied
it was “by an immediate revelation.”
After a synod of
ministers gave their advice, the Court expelled Hutchinson,
Wheelwright,
and William Aspinwall from the colony.
Eight men who had signed
a petition supporting her were disenfranchised;
ten others confessed
their sin and remained freemen.
Five days later all 75 who had
signed the petition were ordered to surrender their
guns, swords,
and ammunition even though because of the Pequot War
all men were
required to carry muskets.
These included the baptist John Clarke
and William Coddington.
Anne Hutchinson was also interrogated in her church on March
15 and 22.
In between she was in the custody of Cotton,
and he
and John Davenport urged her to make retractions.
Finally the
Boston minister, John Wilson, ordered her to withdraw “as a leper,”
and she walked out with her friend Mary Dyer, saying
that
it is better to be thrown out of church than to deny Christ.
Winthrop had called Dyer a “very proud spirit” who was
“much addicted to revelations.”
During this time both
Anne, who was 46, and Mary Dyer had miscarriages,
and Winthrop
argued that this proved God was condemning them.
The General Court
prohibited new arrivals from remaining in the colony for more
than
three weeks without the permission of a magistrate,
and now
none of the magistrates tolerated the antinomians.
In the next
dozen years Mary Oliver was brought to court six times for criticizing
the ministers and magistrates, and she was put in the stocks,
whipped, imprisoned,
and had a cleft stick placed on her tongue.
In 1636 the General Court of Massachusetts authorized £400
for a college,
and two years later it was named after John Harvard,
who died and left his library
and half his estate to the college
in New Town, which was renamed Cambridge.
The first master Nathaniel
Eaton was so severe in his punishment of students
that Thomas
Shepard had to intervene to protect the boys.
The General Court
was shocked by the beatings and the poor food,
and they dismissed
Eaton in September 1639.
That year Stephen Daye used the first
printing press to publish
the pamphlet The Free Man's Oath
and an almanac.
The next year he printed The Bay Psalm Book
and a volume of poems by Anne Bradstreet.
Henry Dunster became
president of Harvard in 1640,
and two years later Harvard's first
class of nine graduated.
Dunster was converted to the idea that
infant baptism had little value or scriptural authority,
and in
1654 he was forced to resign.
The Confederation of New England
did not collect any taxes,
but the Commissioners urged every family
to contribute to the college.
Thomas Dudley was elected governor of Massachusetts again in
1640,
and the next year Richard Bellingham defeated Winthrop by
six votes.
Nathaniel Ward drew up a new code of laws that were
called the Body of Liberties
because its hundred provisions protected
the equal rights of
men, magistrates, churches, animals, servants,
children, and women.
Every wife was protected from being struck
by her husband.
All fugitives from tyranny and oppression were
to be given hospitality.
Only those captured in just wars or those
who freely sold themselves
or were sold to them were to be slaves.
Some African slaves were brought to Salem in 1638,
but very few
were imported in the next forty years.
Every magistrate was to
be elected annually.
No man could be forced to go beyond the plantation
for any offensive war.
Neither monopolies nor feudal restrictions
on land were permitted.
Trial by jury and the process of law were
protected, and generally the laws were simpler
than those in England,
which they were not allowed to oppose.
Capital punishment was
authorized for idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, murder, bestiality,
sodomy, adultery, stealing a person, false testimony, and treason;
England had the death penalty for about fifty crimes.
Freemen
were to elect all officers annually, and the freemen
of each town
could make their own ordinances.
No general assembly could be
dissolved without a majority vote.
The General Court accepted
this code of liberties in December 1641.
The next year they passed
a law requiring parents to teach their children to read.
In April
1642 Massachusetts annexed New Hampshire,
and their freemen and
deputies were not required to be church members.
Winthrop was elected governor again in 1642.
The next year
he proposed a confederation with Plymouth, Connecticut,
and New
Haven to defend against Indians and foreign attacks.
In June 1643
Governor Winthrop allowed La Tour and some French Catholics
to
take refuge in Boston and raise support for his struggle against
d’Aulnay for Acadia;
but this was unpopular, and Winthrop was
only deputy governor the next two years.
After that he was re-elected
governor, and he died on 26 March 1649.
Winthrop believed that
the colony should follow the rule of God,
but he did not think
that penalties had to be imposed for all infractions.
He differentiated
the liberty that makes people more evil from the moral liberty
which obeys proper authority and is good, just, and honest.
Chief Wopigwooit and his son Sassacus of the Pequots gained
hegemony
over the Indians in the Connecticut Valley.
Some Western
Niantics subject to Sassacus killed Captain John Stone
and seven
other traders on the Connecticut River in the spring of 1634.
The Indians accused Stone of abducting two braves who came aboard
his ship to trade,
and he had a record of having tried to steal
a Plymouth ship at New Amsterdam
and of nearly stabbing Plymouth
governor Prence.
In November the Pequots signed a treaty with
the Bay colony.
This treaty was later lost, and the unfairness
of the terms
as remembered by John Winthrop have been questioned.
When the Pequots rejected the one-sided demands, Massachusetts
denounced the treaty.
The Pequots were expected to hand over two
assassins and pay 400 fathoms of wampum,
40 beaver
skins, and 30 otter skins; these were worth
nearly half of
the annual taxes paid in Massachusetts in 1634.
In addition the
Pequots were giving the Connecticut Valley to Massachusetts.
The
Pequots would have irritated their tributaries in trying to apprehend
the killers.
The Mohicans split off from the Pequot nation in 1635.
That year a few pioneers from Dorchester trekked through the
wilderness
to the Plymouth fort at Matianuck that was renamed
Windsor,
and some from Watertown founded Wethersfield, also in
the Connecticut Valley.
Connecticut held its first court at Newtown
on 26 April 1636,
and Thomas Hooker led a congregation of a hundred
to Hartford in June.
The Dorchester and Watertown congregations
followed, and by the
following May some 800 people were
living in Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield.
The Saybrook Company
claimed territory with John Winthrop Jr. as governor
near the
Western Niantics of sachem Sassious and their Pequot allies of
sachem Sassacus.
The Eastern Niantics were allied to the Narragansetts.
In June 1636 Jonathan Brewster, a trader from Plymouth, sent a
warning
to Fort Saybrook that Mohegan sachem Uncas
said the Pequots
expected an attack from the English.
On 4 July 1636 the Standing Council of Massachusetts instructed
the younger Winthrop to give the Pequots an ultimatum.
Sassious
offered his land to this Winthrop in exchange
for his protection
of the Western Niantics.
Marauding Indians attacked the trading
post of John Oldham, who was killed.
A few days later John Gallop
found Oldham's mutilated body
on his pinnace near Block Island;
Gallop's men caused several Indians to drown,
and they bound two
prisoners and threw them into the sea.
Gallop believed these Indians
were subject to the Narragansetts, who blamed Oldham
for bringing
the smallpox epidemic of 1633 that killed 700 Narragansetts.
Roger Williams talked to the Narragansett chief Miantonomo, who
went
with 200 warriors and paid Block Islanders for executing
Audsah,
the murderer of Oldham while arranging with the Niantic
sachem
for Oldham's two boys and his goods to be returned to the
Bay colony.
Governor Vane sent John Endecott in August with ninety men
who ravaged Block Island after the Indians had fled.
According
to Captain John Underhill, the Pequots greeted these men in a
friendly way
but then asked if they came to kill them.
When the
Pequots on the mainland refused to give him 1,000 fathoms
of wampum,
the forces from Massachusetts killed 13 Indians,
stole their ripe corn, and burned their wigwams.
Lion Gardiner
at Saybrook Fort complained that Endecott stirred up wasps and
left.
A few days later five men from Saybrook were ambushed and
killed.
Winslow wrote to the senior Winthrop that the Bay colony
was fomenting a war unilaterally.
According to Gardiner, the Pequots
asked the Europeans if they killed women and children.
After his father Wopigwooit was murdered, Chief Sassacus
tried
to form an alliance with the Narragansetts.
The Narragansetts
were accused in Boston of killing John Oldham,
but Roger Williams
wrote a letter that the Pequots had done it and that
the Narragansett
sachems Canonicus and Miantonomo had gone with
two hundred warriors
to retaliate against the Pequots.
These two chiefs were exonerated.
John Winthrop Sr. wrote a letter to Williams, and Governor Vane
and the Council
asked him to prevent the Narragansetts from making
an alliance with the Pequots.
Williams went alone in a canoe to
Chief Canonicus while the Pequot envoys were there.
He persuaded
the Narragansett leaders to go with him to a meeting at Providence
in which Canonicus amazed the English with his wisdom.
Then Miantonomo
and two sons of Canonicus went to Boston in October
and made an
alliance with the English that was signed by Governor Vane.
Williams
urged Winthrop to send sugar to Canonicus to sweeten the deal,
and he kept the Massachusetts government informed about the movements
of the Indians.
Williams also explained in detail the Narragansett
tactics
for defeating the Pequots that proved to be devastatingly
effective.
Miantonomo asked Williams to convey to Boston that
the natives
would be pleased if women and children were spared.
The Puritan historian William Hubbard ignored Williams' diplomatic
role
and implied that the Narragansetts begged Massachusetts for
an alliance.
The Wethersfield settlers had agreed to share the land with
the sachem Sowheag;
but after they quarreled and drove him out,
he appealed to the Pequots.
On 23 April 1637 about 200 Pequots
killed nine people
in Wethersfield and abducted two girls.
Massachusetts
planned an offensive war against the Pequots
in June and ordered
160 men enlisted.
Plymouth was supposed to send forty men but
declined to participate.
Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield organized
90 men and did not wait until June.
They were joined by Chief
Uncas with 70 Mohegans,
but the Eastern Niantics would not
let the soldiers inside their fort.
After John Winthrop Sr. was
elected governor on May 17, he immediately sent forty soldiers.
Williams persuaded about 50 Narragansetts to participate,
and
this encouraged 400 Eastern Niantics to join;
but most
of them deserted when they learned that Mason was
going to attack
the people at Mystic instead of the Pequot fort of Sassacus.
Gardiner
and Underhill opposed his ruthless plan until the chaplain gave
his moral approval.
The 300 Indian allies made a circle
around the Pequot stronghold at Mystic Fort.
At first Mason wanted
to use the sword to get more plunder;
but because there were so
many Pequots,
he decided to burn them and began setting fire to
the wigwams.
On May 26 the army massacred about 500 Pequots
while suffering only two English killed and 20 wounded.
The
Narragansetts complained that the English way of fighting killed
too many people.
When 300 Pequots appeared on a hill, they were attacked
by Underhill with a dozen men.
As the Pequots fled west, many
more were killed.
About 100 were captured, and the women
and children were given
to the Bay colony and the Narragansetts;
but 22 warriors were executed.
About 50 were killed after a
swamp near Quinnipiac was surrounded.
Mason said that about 180
were captured there,
and they were divided equally between Massachusetts
and Connecticut.
This was the first major enslavement, and Mason
observed that
Pequots did not usually live long in servitude.
Sassacus went to the Mohawks, who killed him, his brother,
and
five other sachems, sending their scalps to Boston.
By the end
of 1637 the remaining sachems begged for peace.
In March 1638
the last 200 Pequots surrendered to the Narragansetts,
but they were seized by Massachusetts troops and were divided
at Hartford;
80 went to Uncas and 20 to Ninigret.
The
Treaty of Hartford was signed on September 21.
Many Pequots joined the Mohicans and
thus became allies of Connecticut.
The Pequots ceased to exist as a tribe.
The Narragansetts and the Mohicans
promised not to fight
each other without the approval of the English.
This extermination of the Pequots opened the Connecticut coast
to colonization,
and parcels of land were given to Connecticut
veterans.
New Haven was founded at Quinnipiac in the spring of 1638 with
annual elections.
On 31 May 1638 Hartford held its first General
Court,
and Hooker preached on founding authority on the free consent
of the people.
The freemen who had been accepted as members of
the three towns met at Hartford
on 14 January 1639 and adopted
a written constitution.
Each of the three towns elected four deputies
to the general court.
John Haynes was elected the first governor
in April, and they adopted a bill of rights
that everyone should
enjoy the same law and justice without partiality or delay.
During the Pequot War the Connecticut General Court asked William
Pynchon
to buy corn from the Indians; but when he could not get
it at the price they demanded,
he was summoned to Hartford and
was fined forty bushels of corn.
In 1638 Massachusetts made Connecticut
cede Agawam,
and the next year the name was changed to Springfield.
In April 1638 John Davenport and Samuel and Theophilus Eaton
moved
their company from Boston to Quinnipiac.
In November they made
an agreement with Momauguin to protect his tribe
and share the
land, and a month later they purchased another large tract from
Montowese.
In June 1639 the free planters at Quinnipiac formed
a constitution for New Haven
that based their laws on the scriptures,
and only church members were to be free burgesses.
In October
they elected Theophilus Eaton their first governor.
That year
the Connecticut court sent Major John Mason with a hundred men
to punish Chief Sowheag at Mattabeseck for harboring Pequot murderers,
and they burned wigwams and carried off Indian corn.
The court
at Hartford appointed a committee to work on forming a general
confederation.
In 1640 Connecticut and New Haven purchased more
territory.
Roger Williams was born about 1603 in London.
He learned shorthand
writing, and by about 1616 he was working as a recorder
for Chief
Justice Edward Coke, who made him his protégé.
Williams
had converted to “the true Lord Jesus,” and after graduating
from Pembroke College at Cambridge in 1627 he became a minister.
He married Mary Barnard in December 1629,
and a year later they
embarked for Massachusetts.
He declined to be teacher to the Boston
Church because they were “unseparated.”
Williams objected
to civil magistrates punishing people for religious sins
such
as idolatry, Sabbath-breaking, and blasphemy.
To find the separatists
he moved to Plymouth in 1631, and he began working
as a missionary
to the Algonquins, learning their language.
He came into conflict
because he questioned the colonial patents and suggested
that
the genuine land rights belonged to the Indians.
In 1633 Williams
accepted an invitation to be a minister at the church in Salem.
He preached that the cross should be removed from their flags
because it is an idolatrous image.
He questioned whether the state
can require religious oaths.
In May 1635 the Salem church made
Williams their teacher.
By August he had withdrawn from communion
with the Bay churches, and he became ill.
In October the leading
clergy told him to renounce his errors, but he refused.
Because
of his illness he was given more time.
In January 1636 Williams was going to be deported to Boston,
but he fled into the forest with a servant.
He found that the Wampanoags and the Narragansetts were involved in a “great contest,”
and he worked to mediate their conflicts.
He was given refuge with
the Narragansett sachem Canonicus
and his nephew Miantonomo and
purchased land from them.
Plymouth leaders asked him to go beyond
their borders, and he crossed a river
to found Providence where
three more men accompanied him.
Williams was joined by his wife
and two daughters in the spring.
Williams did not exercise any
proprietary authority,
and at first there was neither a magistracy
nor a church.
The masters of families met and made decisions by
mutual consent.
After a few months enough single people had joined
that in August 1637 they began
making decisions by the majority
of householders, but “only in civil things.”
His diplomacy
shifted the balance in the Pequot War
by persuading the Narragansetts
to be allies of the English.
Winslow contributed a gold coin,
and in the first year
the community of conscience grew to thirteen
households.
In January 1638 Roger Williams and Henry Vane
purchased Aquidneck
(Rhode Island) from Canonicus and Miantonomo.
They decided that
no one shall be molested because of one's conscience.
While John
Wheelwright led a group that went north from Boston to the
Piscataqua
River and founded Exeter in New Hampshire,
Anne Hutchinson and
her friends joined Williams in Rhode Island.
In March 1638 William
Coddington, Anne’s husband Will Hutchinson,
and others signed
an agreement to become joint proprietors of Rhode Island.
Williams
led a group of baptists, but he soon gave up that sect
to be an
individual seeker and so had no group.
In May the Assembly decided
that Joshua Verrin did not have the prerogative of
beating his
wife because she attended private religious meetings with Williams,
and they withheld his vote for restraining liberty of conscience.
Samuel Gorton was in Boston during the Ann Hutchinson controversy,
and in 1638 he went to Plymouth.
After his servant, Ellen Aldridge,
was charged with “smiling in church”
and making “unworthy speeches,” Gorton was banished in December for preaching
that
happiness could be found while in this world.
He went to
a small colony of Pocasset (Portsmouth)
started by William Coddington
in Aquidneck (Rhode Island).
Many “antinomians” came
to Aquidneck from Massachusetts in the second half of 1638.
In
late April 1639 Gorton and a dozen men rebelled against Coddington,
and thirty persons signed a new compact, electing Will Hutchinson
judge.
After a year Will resigned because the Hutchinsons
no longer
believed in governors and judges.
Coddington had used the laws
of Moses, but they replaced these with the laws of the realm.
Coddington and his supporters fled south and founded Newport by
a deep harbor,
and in November they also gave up theocracy and
put themselves under King Charles.
In March 1640 representatives from both ends of the island
met at Newport.
They formed a coalition government and elected
Coddington governor,
but the offices were divided between those
from newly named Portsmouth and Newport.
Gorton rejected the reunion,
and during the summer he appeared in court to defend
another of
his serving maids, who had attacked a woman for fetching her cow
from their land.
Gorton verbally abused the witnesses and was
chastised and banished.
In August the Newport delegates voted
to establish a public school.
In September the Governor and his
deputy Brenton joined a letter from the governors
of Hartford
and New Haven to Massachusetts suggesting they treat the Indians
with
justice and kindness instead of as the “accursed race of Ham.”
Governor Dudley replied he agreed but said
he would
not capitulate with those from Rhode Island.
In March 1641 they
met at Portsmouth and declared Rhode Island a democracy in which
a majority of the freemen make just laws and depute ministers
to enforce them.
Also they considered it repugnant to their government
for anyone to be accounted
delinquent for doctrine, and six months
later they confirmed liberty of conscience.
The seal contained
the motto Amor vincet omnia (Love conquers all).
In September
1642 they prohibited the sale of Aquidneck lands to any outside
jurisdiction.
Because Massachusetts refused to let people from
Aquidneck or Providence
purchase in their markets, they turned
to their Dutch neighbors for necessities.
At Providence they had only a treasurer chosen monthly and
a clerk for each meeting
until 1640, when they decided to choose
five men to dispose of lands.
Complaints were to be settled by
arbitration.
In the fall the board of arbitrators at Providence
decided that Francis Weston,
who had recently become a Gortonist,
owed £15, and they had some of his cattle attached.
Gorton
and his followers assailed the legal officers in the street, and
some blood was spilt.
Thirteen settlers, including the Arnold
family but not Williams, appealed to
Governor Winthrop in November,
and they subjected themselves
to Massachusetts in September 1642.
One of Anne HuHutchinson’s sons, Francis, and a son-in-law, William
Collins,
were fined and imprisoned in Massachusetts for having
written a letter on her behalf.
They joined Anne’s household in
Aquidneck.
Fearing persecution from the English, in the summer
of 1642
after her husband died, Anne fled to Dutch territory.
During Kieft's war in August 1643 Siwanoy warriors massacred
her
entire household of sixteen people, except for one daughter who
was captured.
1. The History of the Five Nations by Cadwallader Colden,
p. 3.
2. 500 Nations by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., p. 48.
3. Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, Volume 1 by
John Fiske, p. 87.
4. Colonial Virginia, Vol. 1 by Richard L. Morton,
p. 39.
5. History of the State of New York, Vol. 1,
p. 242-243.
6. Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford, p. 75-76.
7. Old South Leaflets, no. 207 in The Puritans in America
ed. Alan Heimert and Andrew Delbanco, p. 91.
8. The Beginnings of New England by John Fiske,
p. 151-152.
This chapter has been published in the book American Revolution to 1800.
For ordering information please click here.